Chapter 1432: The Great Dao Manifests
Chapter 1432: The Great Dao Manifests
The so-called "Enlightenment Value" in the Land of Carefree Joy was, in essence, the Dao comprehension that Dharma Transmitter Jiang obtained through the unique property of "Its Dao as Me."
They were separated by just a single wall.
Dharma Transmitter Jiang's efficiency in comprehending the Dao hadn't changed; what had changed was the environment itself. Simply put, cultivation outside the High Wall would generally be many times easier than within it.
It was just as Li Fan had suspected: any cultivator who managed to step onto the path of cultivation on their own, even the most ordinary one, could be considered a prodigy outside the wall!
And this was only the beginning.
Li Fan keenly sensed that after exposure to the environment outside the High Wall, Dharma Transmitter Jiang's efficiency in comprehending the Dao within the Heaven-Reaching Grand Array was slowly increasing.
His prolonged immersion in the Great Dao was finally beginning to nourish him in return.
Synchronizing his senses with the Dharma Transmitter's, Li Fan saw the great path to the heavens, which he gazed up at from below, gradually shift from a dull gray into a vibrant spectrum of colors.
"Outside the High Wall... its beauty is breathtaking, yet it's also daunting."
A voice sounded beside him, interrupting his reverie.
Li Fan turned to see a blue figure standing beside him.
It was Chen Tianhai of the Taiyan Sect.
"I can feel the influence of that demonic sound intensifying," he said. "The memories of the past are growing clearer, even though I saw the Dharma Spreading Heavenly Venerate suppressed with my own eyes, even though I know it was all just a fabricated memory."
"But that glimpse from all those years ago still haunts me like a relentless nightmare." Chen Tianhai's form wavered uncontrollably.
Li Fan didn't respond, instead trying to silently recite the demonic chant in his mind.
An invisible force seemed to pierce through the Land of Carefree Joy, forging a faint connection between him and the world beyond the High Wall.
The mysterious, profound rhythm of the chant grew much clearer.
A chill went through Li Fan. As a counterbalance, he immediately began to silently recite the Sheltering Immortal Scripture, a gift from the Tiandu Grandmaster.
"The Dao is born, passed down from antiquity. In sorrow and hardship, the Dao is extinguished."
...
As the two chants mingled, the influence of the demonic sound was instantly diluted. However, compared to its effect solely within the High Wall, the neutralizing power of the Sheltering Immortal Scripture was now clearly much weaker.
It could no longer truly compete with the enigmatic and unpredictable demonic chant.
"Xuanyuan Hong..." Li Fan murmured, his expression unreadable.
The Dharma Spreading Heavenly Venerate had escaped death long ago by relying on the power of this whispering voice—a seemingly innate ability of the Xuanyuan clan—to influence and alter the memory of Chen Tianhai, a man he had met only once.
Using the deductive power of the Transformation Dao Stone Mother, he had found a way to slay the many Longevity cultivators of the Ten Great Immortal Sects.
Although Li Fan had since suppressed Xuanyuan Hong, the imprint of the whispering voice left on Chen Tianhai had not faded.
Now that he had followed the power of the Land of Carefree Joy beyond the High Wall, its influence erupted anew. Even though Chen Tianhai had integrated himself into the Transformation Dao Stone Mother, becoming part of its very essence, he was not immune.
"Part of this is because the Great Dao is much more vivid here," Li Fan mused. "A mystical sound that uses rhythm to describe the Dao would naturally be amplified. I imagine the power of a True Immortal Script would be magnified several times over as well."
"But that's not the only reason."
"The amplification is too significant. The Sheltering Immortal Scripture is also based on the Dao of rhythm, yet its enhancement wasn't nearly this dramatic..."
The faint whispers by his ear faded in and out of hearing.
After pondering the matter, Li Fan could only attribute it to the long-missing Xuantian King.
Five years ago, when Li Fan had traveled to the Taiyan Sect and met Chen Tianhai.
With a single sentence, he had laid bare the truth of Chen's corruption by the demonic sound.
At first, Chen Tianhai had refused to believe that his memories had been manipulated for so long. It was only after Li Fan taught him the Sheltering Immortal Scripture, neutralizing the force of the alteration, that he accepted the truth.
When his true memories returned, Chen Tianhai stood as if struck by lightning, speechless for a long time.
"It's not a matter of your own weakness," Li Fan had told him. "How could a mere mortal ever hope to resist the methods of an immortal?"
Those words from Li Fan were what finally freed Chen Tianhai from the agony of his past.
Li Fan's reason for visiting the Taiyan Sect had, of course, been the Transformation Dao Stone Mother.
After helping Chen Tianhai escape the nightmare that had tormented him for ten thousand years, Li Fan used a combination of threats and promises to bring the Taiyan Sect to heel.
Now, that very Transformation Dao Stone Mother rested within Li Fan's sea of consciousness.
However, after a period of study, Li Fan decided against directly fusing it with the high-grade Transformation Dao Stone already in his mind.
When the entire Taiyan Sect had chosen to integrate into the Transformation Dao Stone Mother, their myriad consciousnesses had fused with it, becoming an inseparable part of its very nature.
Li Fan wasn't confident he could erase these consciousnesses without damaging the Stone Mother in the process.
And if he were to simply devour it...
The Stone Mother's power was countless times greater than his own high-grade Transformation Dao Stone.
Furthermore, the consciousnesses of the Taiyan Sect members within could very well contaminate his own Transformation Dao Stone.
Although Li Fan could forcibly purge those consciousnesses later, a peculiar consciousness lay dormant deep within the Stone Mother—one that even he, a demi-immortal, found rather troublesome.
Besides, having mastered the True False Transformation, Li Fan no longer needed to resort to such a crude method as devouring it to enhance his strength.
Within his sea of consciousness, surrounding the Transformation Dao Stone Mother, countless threads extended from the void, touching, analyzing, and comprehending its very essence.
And in a secluded corner of his mind, isolated from everything else, another crystal, identical in appearance to the Transformation Dao Stone Mother, floated silently. It existed in an ethereal, mist-like state, flickering unsteadily.
It was a copy of the Transformation Dao Stone Mother, created by Li Fan through his True False Transformation.
He had successfully replicated the Primeval Cangyuan, his own cultivation base, and even the Azure Nether Pearl. Li Fan had assumed that replicating this Transformation Dao Stone Mother would be just as effortless.
To his surprise, however, the difficulty of replicating this crystal was dozens of times greater than that of the immortal artifact, the Azure Nether Pearl.
To replicate the Azure Nether Pearl, he only needed to triple the power of his cultivation; while strenuous, it was ultimately achievable.
But when faced with the Transformation Dao Stone Mother, brute force seemed to have no effect.
After several failures, Li Fan came to a realization: it wasn't a lack of power on his part. Rather, his understanding of the Transformation Dao Stone Mother had not yet met the minimum threshold required for replication.
This was a first for Li Fan.
Previously, using the True False Transformation had never required him to have a deep understanding of an object's fundamental nature.
However, after careful contemplation and some arduous communication with the [Truth], Li Fan finally understood the reason.
To put it simply, any object he could perceive in its entirety with a single glance could be temporarily replicated with the True False Transformation.
This principle still held true for the Transformation Dao Stone Mother.
The reason his attempts had failed was because he had been unable to perceive the Stone Mother 'in its entirety.'
This was why Li Fan had sealed the Stone Mother within his sea of consciousness, observing it day and night without pause.
He had cordoned off a separate region to prevent the Stone Mother from prying into his memories.
The members of the Taiyan Sect could also leave his sea of consciousness from this region at any time and manifest in the physical world.
Now that Li Fan could replicate the Transformation Dao Stone Mother—using a method of continuous superposition to enhance the stone in his own mind—he had naturally managed to perceive the original in its entirety.
Through his communion with the Stone Mother over this period, Li Fan had also come to understand why he, a demi-immortal, could not perceive its full nature at a single glance.
"Transformation Dao Stone Mother... the Dao itself, transformed into a stone mother."
With a flicker of thought, the virtual Stone Mother he had replicated dissolved into a halo of light and enveloped his own Transformation Dao Stone.
Activating the improved Divine Transformation Dao secret art, he rapidly absorbed the incomparably pure energy from within the halo.
The virtual Stone Mother replicated by Li Fan contained none of the Taiyan Sect's consciousnesses, nor even the mysterious will hidden deep within the real one. It was the pure essence of the Stone Mother, which he could absorb without reservation.
Although each use of the True False Transformation only left behind a small residue of true substance, the Transformation Dao Stone Mother was so extraordinary that the quality of Li Fan's own stone improved exponentially with every application.
Within a decade, Li Fan had already performed nearly a hundred replications and superpositions.
By now, the Transformation Dao Stone in his mind was not much weaker than the actual Stone Mother.
Consequently, he had formed a faint hypothesis about its true nature.
This otherworldly treasure might very well be a direct manifestation of the Great Dao itself!
It was the same principle as the primordial transformations of the demon beast clans.
However, a primordial transformation was merely a single Great Dao made manifest. The Transformation Dao Stone Mother, on the other hand...
Li Fan suspected it might be a congregation of *all* complete Great Daos!
However, the possibility from which the Stone Mother hailed was far, far weaker than the one Li Fan knew.
It had also endured the Dao Annihilation Calamity and the crucible of crossing between possibilities.
The Stone Mother had been weakened even further.
Thus, even as a materialization of complete Daos, its power couldn't even match that of an ordinary Nameless True Immortal.
Of course, all of this was merely Li Fan's speculation, based on the insights he had gained while replicating the Stone Mother.
The Stone Mother's only surviving memory was of fleeing some great calamity, a desperate flight that had, by chance, brought it to the Xuanhuang Realm, where it was later discovered by the Taiyan Sect.
Li Fan surmised that the Stone Mother had completely severed ties with its past precisely to escape pursuit by the Dao Annihilation Calamity.
Although the Stone Mother had lost its memories, Li Fan could still sense the faint, ominous aura of the Dao Annihilation Calamity in the terror it felt toward that disaster.
Li Fan was fairly confident in his speculation. After all, what in all the realms could force a crystalline manifestation of complete Daos to flee in such terror?
And the fact that the Transformation Dao Stone Mother had arrived in the Xuanhuang Realm by 'coincidence'...
...reminded Li Fan of a scene he had once witnessed in a True Immortal's memory.
"This Xuanhuang Realm must hold some profound secret I have yet to uncover."
"Something capable of attracting so many singular existences, compelling them to cross time, space, and even possibilities to arrive here."
"Even... my own transmigration..."
The discovery that the Transformation Dao Stone Mother came from another possibility cast a sliver of doubt in Li Fan's mind about his own transmigration.
It wasn't that he was nostalgic for his life before, nor did he feel any pressing desire to return.
The crucial point for Li Fan was whether the [Truth] had awakened within the body native to this possibility—meaning he had simply taken another's place—
or whether it had awakened within *him*.
As he continued to develop and utilize the True False Transformation, Li Fan's perspective and mindset had undergone a subtle but profound shift.
In the past, whenever he encountered a rare treasure, Li Fan would inevitably feel a desire to possess it, whether out of avarice or the simple need to enhance his own chances of survival.
Now, however, that desire to 'possess' had gradually faded.
His thoughts turned instead to 'analysis' and 'understanding.'
After all, with the True False Transformation in his possession, he could conjure an infinite number of copies of any treasure he desired.
The only thing Li Fan truly wanted to possess now...
...was the [Truth] itself.
...
A torrent of thoughts came to an end as he fused with yet another virtual Transformation Dao Stone Mother.
Li Fan felt his thoughts begin to move with much greater speed.
His attention returned to the mysterious and unpredictable demonic sound echoing in his ear.
Prompted by Li Fan, the Stone Mother re-examined the memories of the Dharma Spreading Heavenly Venerate countless times and finally reached a conclusion.
The lingering whisper was likely the work of the Xuantian King.
However, it was not a contingency for his own resurrection.
Rather, it was a natural change that occurred in his descendants after the very source of their bloodline entered an unimaginable state of existence.
One piece of supporting evidence was that the demonic sound's influence on the Xuanyuan clan had been steadily increasing over time.
It reached its apex in the time of Xuanyuan Sheng.
Xuanyuan Sheng, unable to bear it any longer, had tried to sever that influence completely.
But even he could not prevent the demonic sound from manifesting in Xuanyuan Hong.
And now, outside the High Wall, the demonic sound had grown stronger still.
This seemed to offer further proof for the Transformation Dao Stone Mother's theory.
"After the Xuantian King's mysterious disappearance all those years ago... he didn't die? He advanced even further?"
The speculation sent Li Fan's mind racing.
Ever since encountering the Black Heaven Physician and Evil Su Bai, an idea had been stirring in the back of Li Fan's mind, waiting to sprout.
But he had never been able to quite grasp it.
It was only with the Stone Mother's theory that the thought finally took root, sprouted, and surfaced in his conscious mind.
The Black Heaven Physician and Evil Su Bai both hailed from a very particular possibility.
So, was it possible that the reality he currently inhabited had also produced such an unknowable powerhouse, one capable of traversing possibilities?
If such a being did exist, then among all the figures in the history he knew, the one whose life most resembled a hero's epic was perhaps the Xuantian King.
He was, after all, the last person to ascend before the destruction of the Immortal Realm.
The tale was simply too legendary.
"Perhaps there are other, even more heaven-defying figures beyond the High Wall."
"But regardless, anyone whose methods can transcend the High Wall and traverse the ages is someone I must guard against."
The more powerful such a being was, the more likely they were to know of the [Truth]'s existence.
And the more careful Li Fan had to be in concealing himself whenever he interacted with them.
"I wonder if the Xuantian King has any other descendants left in the Xuanhuang Realm..."
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